The Right Way to Defining Your Target Consumers

The following is an excerpt from our new ebook, How to Design with the Consumer in Mind. To download the full ebook, click here.

Your product needs to do something for your target consumer. It somehow needs to solve one of their problems or meet an unmet need. When it comes to figuring out your target consumer’s wants and needs, you can’t simply guess — it requires research. Consider employing these tools when defining your targets’ wants and needs:

Defining your Target Consumer through Market Research

• Keyword Research – Do keywords research to figure out what people are searching for in relation to your brand or niche industry/market. Long-tail keyword analysis can be a great way to uncover unfulfilled needs and wants.
• Competitors Forums – Stalking your competitor’s website might seem a bit unusual, but is an excellent way to gain insight into what they are doing (and more importantly, what they are not doing). With a bit of research, you can tap into competitor’s deficiencies in order to fulfill unmet needs.
• Product Forums – If your niche market already has products, be sure to check out product forums. This can help to provide insight into what needs and wants aren’t being met — something that you can leverage to your advantage during the design and the development process.
• Surveys and Interviews – Last but not least, it is always a wise idea to interact directly with consumers to figure out what they are thinking. Establish focus groups and either interview or survey participants. This is an excellent way to gain insight into your target market.

Don’t neglect Regulatory Compliance

Pivot Tip: Don’t forget that you also need to design and develop with industry standards and regulations in mind.

There is nothing worse than developing and manufacturing a product, only to figure out you can’t send it to market because it doesn’t adhere to industry specifications.

While meeting your consumer’s wants and needs is crucial, don’t forget that you also need to design and develop with industry standards and regulations in mind. Pivot employs ISO:13485 and ISO:9001 certification standards that ensure that your product meets all necessary requirements. This allows us to meet all client standards, including UL, IEC, CE, CSA, FCC, RoHS, and TÜV requirements.

How Many Employees Does Your Startup Need?

You’ve got a great product idea that you are trying to get off the ground. It’s too much work to go it alone, and you need some help. Hiring — specifically figuring out how many people you need to hire and when — is a critical part of the entrepreneurial process.

How Much Staff Should Startups Have?

“The number of people you have in your company at any time is a very important part of getting the company building process right,” explains prominent VC blogger Fred Wilson. “Too many and you will slow things down, burn through too much cash, and increase management overhead for no real benefit. Too few and you will be resource-constrained and unable to grow as fast as you’d like.” In many cases, figuring out the perfect number of employees is easier said than done. So how many employees do you need, and when should you hire them? Let’s take a look.

Understand your business needs

Hire people who are qualified to get specific jobs done. In order to do that, you need to understand what your startup requires to get your ideas off the ground. Do you need a software engineer? A graphic designer? Evaluate your needs and hire accordingly. Then, decide whether you want to hire temporary or part-time employees, or full-time employees. Depending on your needs, you may also want consider hiring consultants, contractors, or virtual resources.

Keep the team small at first

In general, it tends to be advantageous to keep your team smaller from the get go. The rule of thumb is to hire slowly and wisely to help keep costs down. But even if you can afford to hire more people, it may not be a good idea in the beginning. “Team dynamics are easier in a small group,” explains Wilson. “They get harder in a larger group. Things don’t happen as quickly in larger groups. More management overhead is needed. All of these things work against you as a startup trying to get somewhere before someone else does.” The bottom line? Don’t rush to hire. Always take your time to ensure you’re making the right choices.

Consider the future

When you do finally hire, you must do so with the future in mind. Where do you see your company in five years? What will it be doing? How large will it be? The answers to these questions will help you guide your hiring decisions.

Pivot International is a product design, development, and manufacturing firm with strengths in software development, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and industrial design. If you are interested in engineering a new product or updating an existing product, contact us at 1-877-206-5001 or request your free consultation today.

The Right Way to Define a Target Audience

The following is an excerpt from our new ebook, How to Design with the Consumer in Mind. To download the full ebook, click here.

You can’t please all customers all of the time. If you set out to develop a product that will appeal to each and every person across the globe, you are setting yourself up for failure. Therefore, the key is to define your target audience.

Developing and Designing your Product

By honing in on your target and developing and designing your product with them in mind, your product will automatically have more appeal.

Let’s consider an example. Imagine you have developed a luxury car accessory. Your target market would be anyone with a car, right? Wrong. Of course, anyone with a car could potentially be interested in your product. But because your accessory is a luxury accessory, owners of luxury cars would probably more likely have the cash and the interest in making such a purchase than the owner of a basic budget car. In other words, you are far better off targeting executives who want to make their lengthy commute to work more comfortable than you are targeting middle-class moms or teenagers with their first car. Consider that the majority of individuals that own luxury cars have household incomes over $150,000. Eighty-one percent are male, and the average age of a luxury car buyer is 41. This is a good starting point for your market research.

Whether you are selling luxury car accessories or toilet paper, here are some things to keep in mind when it comes to defining your target consumer:

Know your Product

Does your product meet a basic need? Is it a luxury good? Understand what your product does, and who would find it most appealing.

Consider the geographic reach of your product. Are you a local company with local distribution? Will you be selling your product nationally? Internationally? When defining your target, it is critical to consider the geographic reach of your product.

Use demographics. Segment the market by demographics such as age, household income, gender, and location to see who your product is most likely to resonate with.

Use psychographics. Once you have a clear understanding of the demographics of your target consumer, you will also want to break down market segments by psychographics — values, interests, and lifestyle.

Pivot International is a product design, development, and manufacturing firm with strengths in software development, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and industrial design. If you are interested in engineering a new product or updating an existing product, contact us at 1-877-206-5001 or request your free consultation today.

6 Famous Entrepreneurs Share Advice and Best Practices

If you’re looking for guidance on how to develop a great product and succeed in the world of entrepreneurship, you may already know there’s no secret formula to success. However, you can look to successful entrepreneurs to learn their secrets, and to receive a boost of inspiration.

Product Development Advice From Successful Entrepreneurs

Check out the following advice and best practices offered by entrepreneurs in product development.

Instagram’s Kevin Systrom

“If you’ve got an idea, start today. There’s no better time than now to get going. That doesn’t mean quit your job and jump into your idea 100 percent from day one, but there’s always small progress that can be made to start the movement.” — Kevin Systrom

Instagram founder Kevin Systrom has a great point. Many good ideas can go to waste as a result of people lacking motivation or follow-through in terms of development. If you have a great idea for a product or service don’t quit your day job, but take small steps to turn your idea into something tangible.

Russell Simmons of Def Jam Records

“I’ve been blessed to find people who are smarter than I am, and they help me to execute the vision I have.” — Russell Simmons

Young entrepreneurs would be well advised to heed the words of Russell Simmons, the founder of Def Jam Records. Simmons wasn’t afraid to accept advice and guidance from those more knowledgeable and experienced than him, and you shouldn’t be either. After all, you can’t always build an empire by yourself.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos

“One of the huge mistakes people make is that they try to force an interest on themselves. You don’t choose your passions; your passions choose you.” — Jeff Bezos

Amazon chairman and CEO Jeff Bezos offers powerful advice to young entrepreneurs: do what you love. You can’t force yourself to develop a passion for something, and you can’t truly achieve success at something you don’t love. Implementing a new idea or running a business is challenging and demanding, and often goes hand-in-hand with stress and obstacles. Passion is what keeps you going.

Bill Gates

“It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” –Bill Gates

There is no getting around it: at one point or another, you may fail. Whether it’s a product development idea that ends up being a total flop or poor investment, entrepreneurs are only human and are bound to make mistakes from time to time. The trick is to learn from your mistakes. Great entrepreneurs often spend time reflecting on and thinking about their failure.

Thomas Edison

“I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others…I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent.” — Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison knows a thing or two about great product development. This great American inventor and businessman brought a new host of great products to the world, from the light bulb to the telegraph. When it comes to developing the perfect product, it is all about what your customer needs. If your product doesn’t meet an otherwise fulfilled need, you are setting yourself up for failure.

Richard Branson

“My biggest motivation? Just to keep challenging myself. I see life almost like one long University education that I never had — everyday I’m learning something new.” — Richard Branson

Branson, the chairman of the Virgin Group, attributes his success to his love of learning. The takeaway here? Love what you do, and always strive to learn more. Success isn’t an end point, it’s a process.

Pivot International is a product design, development, and manufacturing firm with strengths in software development, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and industrial design. If you are interested in engineering a new product or updating an existing product, contact us at 1-877-206-5001 or request your free consultation today.

Real-Time Marketing, and Why it’s Good for Your Brand

From Nissan’s famous royal baby ad, to Oreo’s famous “you can still dunk in the dark” Super Bowl campaign, the buzz surrounding real-time marketing has grown steadily over the past few years.

What is Real Time Marketing

Real-time marketing can essentially be described as marketing conducted “on the fly” to capitalize on recent events. Marketers often use real-time marketing to respond to an entire host of different real-time data, including weather, location, behavioral data, demographics, content viewed, and device or browser data. Here are some of the ways real-time marketing can benefit your brand.

Enhance customer experience

Real-time marketing can make your message appear more relevant, and improves customer satisfaction by 67 percent, and customer retention by 60 percent. Research also shows that real-time marketing improves customer purchase intent by 14 percent, and customer interest by 18 percent.

Improve engagement rates

Real-time marketing is an especially powerful strategy to use in social media marketing, and has a tremendous capacity to boost engagement. Consider Oreo’s aforementioned “you can still dunk in the dark” Super Bowl campaign, which is arguably one of the most prominent examples of real-time marketing. As soon as power at the Super Bowl stadium went out, Oreo immediately took the social media world by storm, posting simple graphics with the catchy “you can still dunk in the dark” message. The campaign may have been simple, but the results were impressive. The original image was re-tweeted 15,000 times, and received 19,000 likes. An added bonus? These increased levels of engagement translated in a huge boost in followers. The company’s Twitter following shot up by 8,000, and Facebook fans soared to 36,000.

Boost conversion rates

Research also shows that real-time marketing can help boost conversion rates. A report by Monetate and Econsultancy shows that real-time marketing can boost conversion rates by an impressive 26 percent.

Pivot International is a product design, development, and manufacturing firm with strengths in software development, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and industrial design. If you are interested in engineering a new product or updating an existing product, contact us at 1-877-206-5001 or request your free consultation today.

The Hottest New Sectors in 2015

Are you interested in developing a new product in one of 2015’s hottest sectors?

Best Industry Growth Sectors of 2015

Here are the top sectors expected to thrive throughout 2015.

Technology

There’s no doubt that the tech sector is growing rapidly. “Four verticals in particular are revolutionizing enterprise IT: cloud, mobility, data and security,” explains Luke Burns, a partner at Ascent Venture Partners in Boston. Innovation and new development in these four particular verticals will likely be poised for success in 2015.

Energy

Many experts contend that the energy industry is on the cusp of revolution. New technologies are on the verge of completely changing the industry, meaning new opportunities will be present in an ever-changing landscape. “The chances for reaching a global deal at the U.N. meeting in Paris in 2015 just increased exponentially. In other words, the time is now for nuclear energy,” explains Maxx Chatsko. “Smaller reactor designs, the consumption of nuclear wastes for power generation, and novel processes promise to make future nuclear projects substantially more economical. Meanwhile, dangling the low-carbon carrot in front of world leaders may be too good to pass up.” The industry is hungry for innovative and new products, meaning the sector is ripe with new opportunities for product development.” Experts say that besides nuclear power, businesses that offer new products and processes in other forms of clean energy industries — such as wind and solar — will also be well rewarded.

Health care

New health care legislation and ObamaCare have resulted in major changes to the US health care industry. Experts are predicting a boom in patient-monitoring technologies, a market that is expected to reach $29 billion by the end of the year. “Aging Baby Boomer populations in the US will require solutions outside the hospital. Strained nursing-care systems will drive hospitals and physicians to treat patients at home, spurring demand for systems that allow them to do this safely,” Bruce Carlson explains. “Remote patient monitoring systems inside hospitals or connecting healthcare workers to patients at home continue to demonstrate revenue growth and customer demand.” Furthermore, the industry demand for innovative biopharmaceuticals will also grow, as will the demand for medical electronics.

Pivot International is a product design, development, and manufacturing firm with strengths in software development, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and industrial design. If you are interested in engineering a new product or updating an existing product, contact us at 1-877-206-5001 or request your free consultation today.

Why Personalization is the Future of Marketing

You may already know that market segmentation is crucial to effective marketing.

Introduction to Personalization

But did you know that personalization is becoming increasingly important? Personalization is more than just about recognizing consumers as part of market segments; it is also about recognizing them as individuals, and treating them as such. “Consumers have been pretty consistent and clear in their feedback, the way to avoid alienating them is to give them what they want — personalized, relevant content using their data in a responsible and transparent way,” explains Larry Drebes, CEO of Janrain. If your brand isn’t already making use of personalized marketing tactics, now is the time to start doing so.

The importance of relevant content

Seventy-four percent of consumers become frustrated when website content is not relevant to their interests. A recent study found that three out of four consumers become frustrated when content doesn’t reflect their interests. A frustrated consumer is never good for business, and if your content isn’t resonating with your target audience, engagement rates will only plummet. The bottom line? Personalization is an excellent way to boost engagement and encourage consumers to interact with your content. A MindFire study of 650 multi-channel marketing campaigns found that personalized campaigns consistently generated a higher response rate from recipients.

The power of personalized emails

Personalized emails dramatically improve both click-through rates and conversion rates. According to a study conducted by Aberdeen, personalized emails boost click-through rates by an impressive 14 percent, and have the ability to improve conversion rates by 10 percent. Furthermore, emails with personalized subject lines enjoy a 26 percent higher open rate than email subject lines that are not personalized. The more effectively content can resonate with consumers’ preferences and interests, the more likely consumers are to engage with that particular type of content — resulting in a boost in conversion and click-through rates. On the other hand, the less your content resonates, the more likely you are to be booted from inboxes. Fifty-six percent of consumers report unsubscribing from an email subscription because content was no longer relevant.

Calls-to-action and conversion

User-target calls-to-action boast a 42 percent higher view-to-submission rate. According to a study of more than 93,000 calls-to-action conducted by HubSpot, user-target calls-to-action (those that specifically target specific users) had a 42 percent higher view-to-submission rate over the course of twelve months versus corresponding calls-to-action that were the same for all visitors.

Personalization increases sales

According to e-consultancy service Monetate, marketers who tailor web experience to individual users see close to a 19 percent increase in sales on average, while nurturing leads with personalized content (as opposed to generic content) generates a 20 percent increase in sales opportunities. Furthermore, research also shows that consumers are more likely to make purchases from brands who make use of personalization in their marketing strategies. Another study found that 40 percent of consumers purchase more from retailers who personalize the shopping experience across digital channels.

Pivot International is a product design, development, and manufacturing firm with strengths in software development, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and industrial design. If you are interested in engineering a new product or updating an existing product, contact us at 1-877-206-5001 or request your free consultation today.

Great Business Ideas You Can Expect to See in 2015

2014 was a great year for advances in technology and social media.

Best Business Ideas for 2015

What types of great ideas can we expect to see in 2015? From food trucks to kid-friendly apps, let’s take a look at the three top highlights.

Kid-friendly apps

There are apps that can help you balance your checkbook, apps that can help you make dinner, apps that can help you find your lost device, and apps that can even help you train for a marathon. While apps have been making our lives easier for the last few years, experts say 2015 will see an influx of more kid-friendly apps. According to Common Sense media, nearly three out of every four children has access to some kind of mobile device, whether it’s a tablet or smartphone. All in all, kid-friendly apps are poised as one of the most lucrative business ideas of 2015.

Food trucks

While food trucks aren’t exactly a new idea, since they’ve been roaming the streets of America’s major metropolises for decades now, the food truck has seen a huge surge in popularity over the course of the past few years. Why are food trucks such a great concept? Compared to restaurants, start-up costs for food trucks are relatively low. The failure rate is also much lower than that of restaurants, and is estimated to be between 10 and 20 percent, compared to 60 to 90 percent for restaurants. Furthermore, food trucks are also growing tremendously in popularity across the US. Consider this: a study by Intuit and Emergent Research predicts that revenue from the food truck industry will reach $2.7 billion within the next two years.

Video-sharing platforms

Consumers are increasingly demanding more and more video content. Instagram recently added video-sharing capabilities, and video-sharing platform Vine has soared in popularity. “I anticipate that many interesting alternatives to YouTube will emerge. There is so much left to do in video — it feels like we are only scratching the surface,” explains Bill Gurley, General Partner at Benchmark. The bottom line? 2015 is a great year to invest in video-sharing platforms.

Pivot International is a product design, development, and manufacturing firm with strengths in software development, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and industrial design. If you are interested in engineering a new product or updating an existing product, contact us at 1-877-206-5001 or request your free consultation today.

3 Time Management Tips for Entrepreneurs

Managing your time is often easier said than done, especially if you’re an entrepreneur.

Enterpreneur Time Management Tips

Improve your time management skills with these three simple tips and tricks.

1. Make your work environment more productive

You would be surprised at how much time you can kill working in an unproductive environment. When you decide to plop down with your laptop in front of the television, even the simplest of tasks can take you twice as long. In an environment full of distractions, something you plan on taking a mere 20 minutes to complete could end up taking an hour, which is not great for your focus, or for time management. Power off your television, and set yourself up in a more serious workspace free of distractions. Your productivity will soar, and you will end up wasting less time.

2. Hold fewer meetings

Meetings can be a major waste of time. They often tend to start late, drift off topic, and rarely accomplish everything their organizers intend for them to accomplish. The bottom line? Meetings are wasting your time. The next time you’re feeling tempted to compile your staff together in a conference room, stop and ask yourself whether the meeting is really necessary. The meeting may not be wholly necessary if you do not have a clear objective for calling the meeting that can be clearly and coherently articulated, or you have a clear objective that can be met using the phone, email, or Skype. You can also call off meetings if the objective can be met by having a quick face-to-face conversation with all applicable parties.

If you insist on having a meeting, limit the timeframe. Make sure the meeting starts on time, and get started even if people are late. Arrive with a clear agenda to keep things on track, and when conversation starts to stray, direct it in the right direction to avoid wasting time. If you’re aiming for a short and sweet meeting, try conducting the meeting while standing up, especially if your goal is to keep the meeting under 15 minutes. This creates a sense of urgency, as people are much less likely to stick around if they don’t have a chair to kick back in.

3. Set realistic expectations

Setting unrealistic expectations for how much you can accomplish in a workday is a recipe for disaster, and can leave you feeling stressed, frazzled, and inadequate. Always set realistic goals, and before diving headfirst into a task, think realistically about how long it will take you to complete. As time goes on and you start completing projects on time, you will have a more accurate understanding of time requirements, and facilitate improved time management.

Pivot International is a product design, development, and manufacturing firm with strengths in software development, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and industrial design. If you are interested in engineering a new product or updating an existing product, contact us at 1-877-206-5001 or request your free consultation today.

How to Come Up with Better Product Ideas

What’s the key to great product development? Excellent product ideas. After all, most multi-million dollar companies start with a single great idea.

Best Way To Come Up With Product Ideas

But coming up with great product ideas is easier said than done, and inspiration can often be elusive. However, you can’t just sit around waiting for inspiration — you have to go after it. In the words of famous writer Jack London, “Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don’t get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.” Here’s how to go after the inspiration you need to develop better product ideas.

Make use of semantic intuition

Bryan Mattimore is a renowned brainstorming expert and the author of Idea Stormers: How To Lead And Inspire Creative Breakthroughs. Mattimore has helped over 300 companies come up with better product ideas, and swears that the secret to success is semantic intuition.

According to Mattimore, semantic intuition “prompts participants to create new ideas by having them combine several categories of keywords to create a name for a new idea—and this is before they have any concept of what this newly named idea is,” Mattimore explains. The trick is to develop three different categories of words. Then, randomly combine words from each category to develop a new idea. This trick will help participants in brainstorming sessions make new connections and associations, and in turn, help them churn out fresh ideas.

Make use of visuals

Mattimore also says visuals can be a powerful additive to any brainstorming session and help get creative juices flowing. He explains that visuals can be powerful ways of “bringing to the surface intuitions, emotions and feelings.” Mattimore suggests that leaders bring pre-selected visuals to brainstorming sessions, then prompt participants to throw out ideas inspired by the visuals. Because pictures so powerfully depict different emotions and experiences. they can inspire teams to come up with different ideas for a range of different scenarios.

Don’t be afraid of bad ideas

Bad ideas can actually be excellent springboards to good ideas. Believe it or not, a powerful brainstorming technique involves throwing out an extremely horrendous idea in a brainstorming session, then have participants dissect the idea and redevelop it into one or more better ideas. Remember, no idea is ever useless, and in some cases, the types of ideas considered completely out of the box can actually help us change our perspectives.

Pivot International is a product design, development, and manufacturing firm with strengths in software development, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and industrial design. If you are interested in engineering a new product or updating an existing product, contact us at 1-877-206-5001 or request your free consultation today.